The SitePoint Forums have moved.

You can now find them here.
This forum is now closed to new posts, but you can browse existing content.
You can find out more information about the move and how to open a new account (if necessary) here.
If you get stuck you can get support by emailing forums@sitepoint.com

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Need some database/access help

I have never put together a database using access. I have never created a form that would submit information into a database. That is exactly what I want to do. Not a database where there are tons of relationship tables, but just one table that would include the following:

Last Name
First Name
address
City
State
Email
Home Phone
Cell Phone
Relationship

My reason behind this is that I have to gather this information for a guest list for a wedding. I figured it would be easy ( and a learning experience) to put together a form that could be sent to all the people via email and when they submit their information, it would simply include the data into the access database file I created.

If I use Dreamweaver, and I put together the access database file (assuming I only have to use one table, correct?) what do I need to put into all the text boxes so that it would include the information into my database.

If I confused anyone, I apologize. Please correct me where I am wrong, since this is an area I don't carry much knowledge.

So you want this to be a form that they view online and enter information into? You are going to need some kind of server-side processing language to do that. The "big three" languages for this are ASP, PHP and ColdFusion. Which one to use, well that depends Often the question answers itself - what does your webhost support?

All things being equal, I think you should use ColdFusion. It's the easiest to learn if you've never done this kind of thing before, and it integrates very nicely with both Dreamweaver and Access. But if you can only use PHP (for example) the question's moot....

thanks for the quick reply. Well, the only option I have right now is to go through powweb.com. I run a website for a family friend, and unless I can find a free option that would support coldfusion, I would have to use the option I just mentioned. Powweb supports ASP and PHP. I can't imagine there is a TON of work (regarding coding) involved into doing this for one form.

I hope that helps a little. Like I said, I just need a form that can be submitted and a database that can collect the information from each time someone does it. I am assuming it just puts the new information on a new line in the database.

Well, my second choice would be ASP - it goes quite nicely with Access, being a Microsoft technology and all

There are some good basic tutorials out there, but the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the ones at w3schools.com - if you ask in the ASP forum they may have some other good places to look. NB if you do use the w3schools tutorial, you will need to read the stuff on ADO (at the end of their ASP tutorial) to get an idea of how to interact with a database using ASP.

Of course, if it's a one-table database you might just get away with a flat text file and read it in from the filesystem. I'll leave that decision up to you